It’s been a while since I last published a blog update. The last one was in March and since that time, there’s been a lot of changes made to the blog. For those of you who are new to JaypeeOnline, you might be wondering why I publish these blog updates. The purpose of these blog updates is to make my readers aware of the changes I’ve made to blog theme, design and layout, newly added features and the plugins I’ve uninstalled or installed so that they’ll have an easier time navigating through the different areas of the blog and make their browsing experience a better one.

Here are some of the changes I’ve made to the blog since my last blog update.

Uninstalled Plugins

• WP-Clickmap – Plugin that creates a clickmap (similar to heatmap) that displays the areas where visitors click for each page.
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress – Plugin makes using the Google Syntax highlighter to highlight code snippets within WordPress simple.
• UserAgent Spy – Plugin that displays the visitors operating system and web browser in each comment they make. Used this to replace the Firestats plugin feature that displays country, operating sytem and browser.

I uninstalled the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin because it is no longer compatible with newer versions of WordPress 2.8+. I’ve since replaced it with the SyntaxHighlighter Evolved plugin that works exactly like the first plugin, although the codes displayed by the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin looked better. The WP-Clickmap plugin is a very useful plugin especially if you want to know the areas where your visitors click on your blog. It also helps you determine the best spots to place your ads. Unfortunately, this plugin caused a problem on my web server and I had no choice but to uninstall it. I can’t remember exactly why I replaced the UserAgent Spy plugin with the Comment Info Detector plugin, but I think it was because of an issue or conflict with the theme or one of the other plugins I’m using.

Btw, I’ve removed the Twit This Post option with Twitter bird icon and my custom Social Bookmarking icons/buttons after each post because of the Sexy Bookmarks plugin. I’ve also removed/uninstalled the UserVoice feedback widget because it wasn’t doing the job or the readers/visitors aren’t accustomed to using it.

Installed Plugins

• Comment Info Detector – Enables you to detect your commenter’s info and show their country flag, web browser, operating system automatically.
• CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
• WP Greet Box – Shows a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from.
• LinkWithin – Displays recommended stories and associated thumbnails from your blog
• Sexy Bookmarks – SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.
• SyntaxHighlighter Evolved – Easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all.

Other Blog Changes

• Added a blog mascot. Hired a professional designer to create a blog mascot for JaypeeOnline.
• Changed the header image/banner font style.
• Changed the subscription options and added new buttons. Readers and visitors can now easily subscribe to JaypeeOnline’s RSS Feed or get updates via Email, Twitter and join JaypeeOnline’s Facebook Fan Page.
• Created a help page for RSS, Email, Twitter updates and other subscription options
• Tweaked the Author Info box.
• Added a Google Custom Search box below the post.
• Added the Wibiya Toolbar.
• Minor changes include changing the post title font from Times Roman to Trebuchet MS and making the content font size larger so readers won’t have a hard time reading or won’t have to squint their eyes while reading the posts.

Screenshots:

Subscription Options Buttons (top of the sidebar site-wide)

LinkWithin (after each post)

Sexy Bookmarks and Author Info box (below LinkWithin)

Btw, those icons aren’t misaligned. If you hover over those icons, they would pop up. Just wanted to make that clear coz I received a comment from one reader that my social bookmarking icons were hidden or covered by the author info box.

In-post Google Custom Search Box (below Author Info box)

I guess that’s it. In case I missed something, I’ll just update this post later on. Anyways, these are the changes that I’ve made to the blog and I hope that these changes can improve your browsing experience and make the blog more reader-friendly.

If any of you guys have comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments section or if you want to remain anonymous, you can send me a message via the contact page. Thanks and have a nice day!

In my last blog update post, I listed the new WordPress plugins that I installed here on JaypeeOnline. I also mentioned that I would do a review of those plugins so you guys would have an idea on how they work and how I use them here.

Today, I’ll be sharing with you the Google Syntax Highlighter WordPress plugin created by Peter Ryan. It integrates the Google Syntax Highlighter by Alex Gorbatchev to any WordPress-powered blog. This is the plugin I use to display codes which you might have noticed in my recent articles like HowTo: Allow Google Reader Access To Hotlink-Protected Images and HowTo: Widgetize a WordPress Theme.

Features:

• 100% client side, no server dependency
• Multiple languages support
• Wide browser support
• Very lightweight

Languages Supported:

• C++ (cpp, c, c++)
• C# (c#, c-sharp, csharp)
• CSS (css)
• Delphi (delphi, pascal)
• Java (java)
• Java Script (js, jscript, javascript)
• PHP (php)
• Python (py, python)
• Ruby (rb, ruby, rails, ror)
• Sql (sql)
• VB (vb, vb.net)
• XML/HTML (xml, html, xhtml, xslt)

Screenshots:

.htaccess file

WordPress theme sidebar

Previously, when I wanted to display a piece of code within my post I would have to copy and paste the code into a text editor, take a screenshot, edit it and insert the image into my post. It was a tedious and very time consuming task.

WordPress has a built-in tag called “code” that lets you display and specify a certain line of text as code. So why am I not using it? The problem with this is that it doesn’t recognize HTML tags and in order for it to work you’ll have to use character entities or extended characters. One alternative is to use the “pre” tag which is the one used by the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin. The “pre” tag like the “code” tag displays the tagged text as monospaced type but the difference between the two is that the “pre” tag exactly reproduces everything inside the “pre” tags.

What makes Google Syntax Highlighter cool is that it displays the code the way advanced text editors do. The parameters are color coded and there are line numbers that makes it easy to find a specific line of code. Aside from that, the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin also gives the user an option to see the code in plain text and to copy the code into the computer’s clipboard. This plugin lets you implement the “pre” tag and display the code in style easily without having to worry about messing with the WordPress stylesheet.

So how do you use the Google Syntax Highlighter plugin? All you need to do is download, install and activate the plugin and make sure you read the Usage Directions. Then you can start using it. Just specify the code snippet in your blog post/page and you’re good to go.

Here’s a sample of how I was able to display the code for screenshot #2 or the code for the WordPress theme sidebar.

[php]
<pre name="code" class="php">
<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) )
register_sidebar(array(
‘before_widget’ => ”,
‘after_widget’ => ”,
‘before_title’ => ‘<h4>’,
‘after_title’ => ‘</h4>’,
));
?>
</pre>
[/php]

Copy the piece of code that you want to display and paste it between the line highlighted in red. Replace the value of “class” to the specific language that the code is written in. In the example, I put php because I needed to display a piece of php code.

The Google Syntax Highlighter WordPress plugin is very easy to install and doesn’t use much resources. Its very useful if you want to display codes within your post.

Check out the Google Syntax Highlighter WordPress plugin.

What do you think of the Google Syntax Highlighter WordPress plugin? Are you already using it or have tried it before on your blog? Do you know of other WordPress plugins that have the same functionality? Please share your thoughts. Thanks for your time!

For those of you who are regular readers, you know that I previously published blog updates regularly to keep you guys posted on the changes I’ve made to the blog like the plugins I’ve installed/uninstalled or the changes in the layout like adding, removing or moving banners, widgets or other stuff. I haven’t published a blog update for more than year and I think its about time I did another one.

Uninstalled Plugins

• Firestats – Firestats is a WordPress plugin that keeps track of real time statistics, recent referrers, search engine keywords, recent popular pages and other visitor information. It also displays the country, operating system and browser used by a person who left a coment. I used to love this plugin, but because it uses up too much disk space and increases the size of the WordPress database, I decided to uninstall it and instead use other online services to keep track of my blog statistics and analytics.
• WP Grins – A plugin that displays emoticons/smileys for readers to use in the comment form. I uninstalled this plugin because it had a conflict with the WMD Editor plugin.
• WP Post Ratings – Plugin that enables the readers to rate the post. Uninstalled WP Post Ratings because I felt like it doesn’t serve its purpose and it wasn’t really that relevant. Aside from that, I also discovered that there were a few visitors who purposely sabotaged the posts by rating posts low. I don’t know the reason why they did it but WP Post Ratings keeps track of the visitors IP address so I know who did it and what posts they rated.
• MyAvatars – Plugin that displays a commentators MyBlogLog avatar or Gravatar. Really liked this plugin but decided to get rid of it to minimize the use of plugins and instead use Gravatar which didn’t require a plugin.
• Lightbox 2 – Javascript that enables viewing of larger images within the same window.. Had a conflict with one of the scripts used by my theme – Fresh News.
• WP-Polls – Plugin that adds an AJAX poll system to any WordPress blog. I’ve temporarily removed it coz I have no use for it right now. I might put it back when I come up with something that I might need your opinion with.

Installed Plugins

• Blog Stats – Adds shortcodes so you can easily insert and display certain blog stats on your blog posts or pages.
• Global Translator – Plugin that automatically translates blog posts into 41 different languages using 4 different online translation engines Google Translation Engine, Babelfish Translation Engine, FreeTranslations.com and Promt.
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress – Plugin makes using the Google Syntax highlighter to highlight code snippets within WordPress simple.
• UserAgent Spy – Plugin that displays the visitors operating system and web browser in each comment they make. Used this to replace the Firestats plugin feature that displays country, operating sytem and browser.
• WMD Editor – Adds the WMD Editor to the comment field, to make it easier for visitors to leave comments. You can see it in action above the comment form.
• WP-Clickmap – Plugin that creates a clickmap (similar to heatmap) that displays the areas where visitors click for each page.

Other Blog Changes

• Moved FeedBurner to my Google account so JaypeeOnline’s new RSS feed URL is now http://feeds2.feedburner.com/jaypeeonline/HhAk. Please update your RSS readers and aggregators.
• Added the Twit This Post option after each blog post. If you like any of my posts, please feel free to share it with others on Twitter.
• Installed the UserVoice feedback widget that lets readers/visitors anonymously give feedback and vote for suggested ideas. Feedback tab found on the left side of the blog.
• Moved the Previous Post and Next Post links from below the comment form to the section between the post and the comments.

For those of you who are still not aware of the Top Commentator of the Month award/contest, you might be interested to know that each month I’ll be giving away prizes like cash, tshirts and schwag to the person who leaves the most comments each month. Check out the official page to know more about the rules and how to join.

There are some WordPress plugins that I’ve recently installed that I will be writing a review of in the next couple of weeks so if you’re interested and would want to know more about it, make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss the upcoming WordPress Plugin reviews.

Also, if any of you guys have any comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments or contact page. If you want to remain anonymous, you can use the feedback tab found on the left side of the blog. Thanks and have a nice day!